Groklaw: The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin–Ch. 13

“From late 1986 on, Keith Bostic would stand up at each USENIX
Conference and announce the progress of his–the CSRG’s–project:
about 35% of the code was AT&T license free; about 55%; about
77%… The progress may have seemed slow at times, but the was
always some progress.

“And there were always loud cheers and resounding applause.

“AT&T’s lawyers had started off on the wrong foot in the
mid-1970s; the fee structure made AT&T-license-free UNIX a
financial necessity. Among others, John Gilmore nudged the CSRG to
produce a license-free version. After all, it was clear that
AT&T hadn’t objected to Minix, which was a UNIX-like system
with no AT&T code…”

Complete
Story